It’s often asserted that the US had no plan for the post war period in Iraq. That’s not quite true. The State Department did extensive planning, which was basically junked because Rumsfeld wanted to run everything. His plan was for the troops to be showered with flowers, for the US to set up an Iraqi government and then leave within three months. This in turn was junked when the initial viceroy, Jay Garner, was junked. Then along came Jerry Bremer and the uber smart “sack the entire army and most of the civil service and create an insurgency” plan. But there’s more…
Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings has posted recently declassified Powerpoint slides showing the US military had its own plan for a three month post war occupation. There’s not a lot to add to her post title – read it and weep.
Hilzoy is female.
Thanks. Fixed.
By the way, if you look at page 1 of document “K” of the slides, there’s a very interesting tidbit:
The full list of coalition forces is presented. Guess what, the Australian SAS task group in Jordan is listed. So we were part of the official plan back in August 2002. You know, back when we had in no way committed to going into Iraq according to Honest John.
Somebody else already noticed this, by the way, but I’m not sure who it was.
Interesting!
I think you’ll find that all questions in Parliament in 2002 from the ALP on this point were quite clumsily worded, along the lines of: “Has the government resolved to fight a war against Iraq?”
Howard, Downer, Hill, et al. easily batted these away with a “no decision has yet been made” answer.
The more precise question would have been: “Which Australian units have been offered and are being considered as part of any allied war plan against Iraq?”
A negative answer to this would have triggered a misleading of Parliament charge when Robert’s SAS info eventually comes out.
Perhaps the ALP could learn to frame precise questions.
Mark:
Didn’t T.E.Lawrence say something about people leaving The Enemy out of their plans? But what would he know? After all, he was a chap who “went native” and hung aroung with a bunch of wogs, sand-Arabs and camel-jockeys ….. [nowadays we would just call them G-d m-f towel-heads and hit them with plenty of shock-and-awe] …..
Katz:
What gives you the idea that the Lib-Labs on the Opposition benches actually wanted to frame precise questions? They knew very well what they were doing ….. they are hoping to be in government themselves one day.
Mark:
Lack of an avalanch of comments here probably does not mean a lack of interest Stunned silence perhaps?